To think being a tenant is an absolute misery

[nellyelloe]

For reasons I won't go into, we have found ourselves having to rent for 18 months after selling our house. Luckily we are now buying again so this won't be forever.

It has been the most eye opening 18 months of my life, and I feel SO sorry for people that are stuck renting. It has a genuine negative impact on my mental health. The constant reminders that it's not your home, never feeling relaxed as you're terrified of damaging something, the constant rent increases, the inspections. It's a total misery.

Now I do understand there are some awful tenants about who destroy houses, but that's not us. We haven't even put a single picture on the wall, pay our rent early every month and keep the house beautifully.

We have to suffer inspections every 3 months as per the contract. Now I know the landlord has the right to see how the house is being kept but it feels like an absolute invasion of our privacy every time, to have some 19 year old from the estate agents come round and take photos of the house and how we live. Every inspection fills me with weeks of dread even though I know the house is spotless and exactly as we moved into it. I stupidly didn't even think about it but we got our daughter a hamster and during the last inspection were really told off for it and told they would need to seek the landlord's permission as we had broken the no pets rule. After being a home owner for 20 years, it stupidly didn't cross my mind. Luckily we got the landlord's permission and a clause in the contract to keep Nibbles 🙄 I was made to feel like an absolute criminal for it, like I was storing a body in the loft. It is awful that people are made to feel like this over a pet, something that brings families and children so much joy.

The hinge fell off the integral dishwasher as it was old and dodgy. The 19 year old estate agent came round again to see if it was our fault or if it was due to reasonable wear and tear.....it was reasonable wear and tear as the dishwasher is 10 years old but again, made to feel like some careless idiot for a faulty hinge.

We have an app where we go on and pay the (£1700😬) rent and it has a lovely countdown on it saying when our contract ends...it's really unnerving seeing it and knowing they could kick us out at this point and we would have no right to stay, even if our house purchase doesn't complete in time.
Every 6 months, the rent has gone up £100. We are totally overpaying compared to other properties but again, we can like it or lump it. We are paying £300 more a month than we did 18 months ago. Our salaries have not increased. The mortgage on our house we are buying will be half our rent.

Renting is a constant reminder that it's not your home, that you need permission to breathe and you have people round to check up on you like a child has their parent check their room is tidy.

I honestly find it hellish. The housing system in this country is fucked. The renters reform act is now abandoned. I'm so glad I will be out of this soon but genuinely so sad for others who are in it for the long haul.

It's not "someone else's property ", it's the tennant's home.

I think there is some recognition of that stress now though - so many more people are renting privately compared to thirty/forty years ago, that there's an understanding it has to be addressed at policy level - it's not good for the economy to have a third of the population living in insecure overpriced housing. Hence some of the moves towards regulation.

We need to do more though. Obviously it would be great if there were more social homes available but in the absence of that at minimum we need to re-introduce rent controls and also return to only limited grounds for eviction - sale, occupancy, occupancy by family member, bankruptcy, death. All of this so called accidental landlording isn't doing anything useful - apart from for landlords themselves lol.

don't think it's a "first world problem " though. Housing is a basic need, and the stress of housing instability is vastly underestimated.

This. It's no coincidence there's a growing number of people in poor health, at the same time as a larger proportion of the population are private renting.

I was sure I'd seen something about the effect of private renting on health so I decided to google to check. It doesn't just affect mental health. It also damages physical health. Concerningly it's more damaging than smoking or being unemployed. I should imagine the constant insecurity of private renting is a major factor (I noticed the study found social renting was no different to ownership, in terms of being less harmful to health).

https://www.bmj.com/company/newsroom/renting-rather-than-owning-a-private-sector-home-linked-to-faster-biological-ageing/

Wow, that is really quite stark.

And that's a sizeable chunk of the population, who are in that situation.

What's even more depressing is that the stress is caused by deliberate policy decisions. I mean, the UK was very much a rentier economy, prior to the 1960s. But, until then renting didn't mean insecurity. So although people didn't own their homes, it didn't matter. They didn't need to.

From the Industrial Revolution onwards, all of those lovely London, Manchester, Leeds town houses, all those writers and bankers and professors and so on living in them, they didn't own, but they didn't care, because they didn't need to own in order to have security. They paid rent, that was enough.

Even when more people began to buy, it was enough to rent right through to 1988 when the thatcher government made residential tenancies six months long. From a lifetime, to six months, in one fell swoop. And every single government that's come after, none of them have changed that. Even though it was completely normal to rent a home on a forever basis, even to pass it on to one's children, before 1988.

Wow what an insight

LL don't stop people buying their own home. It's the tenant either not having a deposit, having a bad credit history or not earning enough salary multipliers to pass the banks stress test. But don't let the truth stop you having a moan at LL's.

Did you see what rent controls did to Scotland. More LL sold up so even less rental properties to go round those who need them.

No but I probably know a lot more than you.

Rents tend to go up when mortgage rates do. If you were buying you'd have to suck up the mortgage rates increases.

So on a systematic level - people owning multiple houses, and residential property being considered a major avenue for revenue generation - you don't think that contributes to ballooning house prices at all?

Sold up to... people who wanted to live in them?

It resulted in massive rent increases and more LL sold in Scotland than any other area of UK. Now Scotland face even more competition for private rentals. You must know there will always be people who can't save up a deposit or earn enough to get a mortgage based upon strict borrowing criteria of earning multipliers.

Rents increased AFTER IT ENDED. What a surprise!

OP I'm so sorry if I've not read the whole thread but I wanted to hop on and see if you've read about your rights as tenants?

If you're in England then typically the landlord can only put up rent once per year and it must be in keeping with the growth in property prices in the area (even on a rolling contract). Also, don't be worried about wear and tear and things naturally just breaking. I know it's easy to say, I had a horrible landlord who blamed us for literally everything that broke and normal wear and tear to the property that even predated us moving in (faulty washing machine, hob, marks on wall, it goes on). It really affected me and I was very anxious, always anticipating the next fight with the landlord.

It went to a deposit resolution service at end of tenancy because he tried to fleece us of money during the tenancy and then our entire deposit at the end despite us never actually having broken anything. It was a faff with the paperwork but we got our entire deposit back, the judge said the landlord couldn't prove we had broken or damaged anything and because we had evidence of us alerting the landlord ASAP to any problems (and photos) we had upheld our side of the contract. So, even if you do have a grabby landlord who blames you for things breaking, in my experience you can 'fight back' as it were - just make sure you keep all your emails as evidence and then at end of tenancy it can go to resolution. If you haven't broken something through misuse (like the dishwasher hinge), don't hand over any money and point out that it's faulty. The landlord can arrange a repair and it can then go to deposit resolution at the end of tenancy to determine who should ultimately pay.

I'm sorry you have a dud landlord, it's so so horrible. But do look at Shelter's advice for tenants and don't be afraid to question things eg if you're getting blamed for something breaking when it's not your fault. Hugs to you X

But you would still have your home and roof over your head presumably?

Your inconvenience does not compare with being homeless.

It doesn't seem fair some have many houses and some have none.

Everyone should be able to own a piece of this land, it makes a difference to wellbeing and security etc.

The way things are is very Tory ish ' I'm alright Jack'.

Bring back social renting with lifelong tenancies and support to buy homes with higher taxes for 2nd home owners.

The housing market is so fucked. I hear you. We rented for almost a year whilst waiting to buy in a new area. The landlord agreed to fix things, but was a tight fisted bastard who would come in and do shoddy repairs himself, and replace old broken white goods with old, energy inefficient second hand ones.

It was technically all legal but the spirit of it was to deliver the cheapest, poorest quality service in return for the vast monthly sum paid.

Wow, thanks for posting this. Honestly my mental health has never been so poor as it has in these last 18 months.

This is interesting. But I’m also interested in Borzoi’s point. Who did they sell to?

😂😂😂

An assumption based on? :)

Edit function not working – just spotted this is you as well Borzoi!

No idea, people with deposits and earning multipliers I assume. The point is after many LL's left the sector some moving to air b'n'b there were still as many people wanting to rent but now far less houses available to rent.

I can think of 46. Do you know more?

? 😂

There are presumably still the same number of houses present.

People don't become landlords out of the goodness of their hearts and a desire to provide housing. They do it from a desire to make a profit.

If it's too easy to turn a profit from investing in private real estate, you push house prices up. This puts home ownership out of reach of people who might otherwise be able to afford it.

It's not like it's easy to find a private rental on a low income either....

Inspections every 3 months? We don't have that. We had one a few months after we moved in (which I panicked about, then the guy turned up and checked the smoke alarm and boiler and promptly left), and then another after we renewed the contract.
No rent increases so far either. In fact I offered £150 more rent per month in the first place as we were desperate and there are so many people applying for each rental property, and the landlady said she was perfectly happy with the original amount and didn't want any extra.
Surely it's obvious you'd need to double check with landlord about pets? We just asked the letting agent, then got confirmation it was all fine a few days later. Hardly the end of the world.
If we were planning on staying here a long time I'd just double check but I'm sure they'd let us put pictures up etc, but as we will hopefully be buying somewhere soon (once we can find a house we like) it's not worth it. I'm really grateful we have this place in the meantime though, and when we do move we will be paying much much more in mortgage than we do in rent.